#1239 – Swollen

I’ve recently gone on a gluten-free diet. The first time we went out to a real restaurant was interesting. We decided to go there because of the gluten-free options they showed on their website. The website didn’t mention how new this was for them. When I ordered my hamburger on a gluten-free bun the server’s eyes lit up. “Oh! We have a new gluten-free bun for that!” Somehow she was telling me about something existing after I had already ordered it. Then a few minutes later she came back to inform me that I couldn’t have fries with my burger because they aren’t cooked in a separate fryer and would be contaminated. I opted for a baked potato upgrade. When our order arrived it was brought to us by the manager of the restaurant. He was very excited to serve me my hamburger and GIANT baked potato. He chatted us up about the local bakery they found to make the hamburger buns and how expensive they are but it’s worth it so that families can all dine together. It was all very charming how excited they were to see me eat that burger.

27 thoughts on “#1239 – Swollen”

I’m pretty much bullet-proof when it comes to allergies and sensitivities – I’ve eaten whatever was put in front of me, wherever I’ve been – and I’ve been to the far side of the globe and back again. Some of it, I didn’t *like,* but none of it caused me anything other than aesthetic distress.

My sister, though… She’s a wreck. And her kids are much worse than wrecks – It’s easier to list what they *can* eat, than what they can’t.

Being gluten free myself, I can’t help but wonder…Do you actually have a gluten allergy/sensitivity, or are you just trying it as a health or weight loss diet? Or an elimination diet… I would imagine you have a sensitivity given that you passed up the cross contaminated food. Celiac?

It’s come to my knowledge recently that people are on the diet when they don’t need to be. If you aren’t allergic to gluten, don’t do that to yourself. It costs too much money and does not make a difference. The only reason a gluten free diet causes people to lose weight is because wheat is a staple and (it seems like in the beginning, at least) almost everything, for one reason or another, contains gluten. It’s also a fancy new word for no-carb diet for people who don’t eat rice. :-p

My major food allergy is whole tomatoes. I get a horrible case of itchy hives (and sometimes an accompanying asthma attack) if I eat them. Whatever is in them is apparently destroyed in processing because I have no problem eating tomato-based sauces.

My minor food allergies are apples (they give me a stomach ache) and tortillas. (They make me itch too, though without the hives.)

Studies show that a little less than 1% have Coeliac disease, but around 15% (1 in 7 people) are Gluten Intollerant or Sensitive to a noticable degree.
As someone who is Gluten-Intollerant myself, I’m so happy with the number of products and restraunts that now cater, even the big pizza chains now do gluten-free bases. 🙂

My Mom is gluten free too, and had her first gluten free burger in two years when she came up to visit me and we went to this little hot dogs & hamburger place in the small town I used to live in. We were shocked when they said they had gluten-free buns, so my Mom ordered a burger and was in heaven for a while. We ate there again the next day 🙂

My aunt has coeliac. She’s actually quite ill with it, and she had to drop out of university 2 years ago because she just couldn’t function. She’s getting better now, though.
She’s also allergic to capsicum peppers.
And she’s vegetarian.

I lost the ability to process milk protein a while back. The slightest bit of milk, butter, or cheese lays me out for a day. Going out to a restaurant is always a bit of a gamble. Sometimes it is terrible – I actually cannot eat anything on the menu of Olive Garden. Sometimes, though, it is an amazing experience. Some of the fancier restaurants I have been to have actually brought out a separate menu for specific food allergies. That kind of care about your customers is really missing in most places these days.

I’m a celiac person too.
Recently the Boston Pizzas where I live have had the option to get your pizza with a gluten free crust. It’s pretty delicious.
I’ve been a celiac ever since I was born, so I’ve learned to live with it pretty well.

Peter Punjab:
Gluten is in wheat, barley, and rye, and many grains (especially oats) are cross contaminated in the milling process. You do not have to be celiac to be gluten intolerant. If you are celiac, gluten is, for lack of a better word, poison. Many people have sensitivities or allergies that are not so extreme that they cannot even tolerate breathing in flour dust. Others have allergies that are just as extreme as celiac disease, but are still just allergies.

In other words, gluten is not just in wheat, and celiacs aren’t the only people who can get horribly sick from it.

It’s good to know awareness of gluten problems is increasing. My dad is a celiac and it almost killed him; for the longest time no one knew what was wrong with him. Ironically, the doctors would often tell him to eat more fiber and whole grains, the very thing that was poisoning him.

Gluten-free is hard! One of my closest friends recently found out that all his ongoing digestive system troubles were because of a wheat allergy. I’ve been re-learning how to cook so that I can make gluten-free foods whenever he visits me (at least once or twice a week). A lot of my early attempts were utter failures, and I still haven’t managed to find a GF pie crust recipe that’s even halfway edible. I can do several types of cookies, cornbread, muffins, biscuits, and a delicious gluten-free carrot cake …. but I haven’t been able to make my friend’s favourite kind of pie (raspberry rhubarb) for him just yet. A few more experiments and I’ll hopefully get it sorted.

Hmm… does this mean Biff is alergic to seafood/fish types? Or is that something else DISGUISED as fish? Hmm…

Anyway, all this discussion on allergies/gluten-free has reminded me of a few months ago, when I believed I was Lactose Intolerant. That sucked. I kept having stomach aches, and I had been eating cheese a lot, and THEN I read about it in a magazine.

Have you noticed how if you read about a disease in a magazine, you always think you have it?
Or in my case, reading about disasters, and then not sleeping at all for fear of tsunamis or tornados… (*Pshaw, when a tornado lands on Wales, I will dance the cancan naked infront of the Queen. Hopefully, we don’t get any tornados, then.*)

I am gluten intolerant as well, so I understand your plight! But I find that servers and managers are so willing to help and so excited over helping us out! There’s even a gluten free fish and chips place where I live!!!

About the celiac number: that 1 in 133 people stat came out of a 15 yr study that was published in 1948. So those numbers may have been correct for 1934 to 1947. There’s a new study in progress now.

And yes, Ireland and Italy have more correct numbers for our modern times, in which wheat flour and malt are used to “enhance flavor” when the fat is reduced for calorie reduction and fat free recipes. Btw, Italy tests ALL their population by the age of 4. By their numbers, reported to me at a Celiac Foundation seminar about 2009, 25% of the population is ~celiac, with another 15% “sensitive”… And THOSE numbers are already older than what we’d find today, I’m sure